#GETHYPED

Facebook killing small businesses? Put down your pitchforks people

Sensationalist media has called the small business owners to war after claiming that Facebook is making changes that are “death to small businesses” – and boy has it been shared everywhere.

Like, everywhere ok guys, we get it.

But is there any truth? Is Facebook over? Should we all go home and throw in the towel?

Now, we’re not so naïve as to think that Facebook will be with us forever, laughing at memes all the way until the sun explodes and we all die – it’s just not realistic. Trends and media come and go, and there will likely be another social media platform or medium that booms later – and then that will die and the wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round.

But is today that day? Are we witnessing the fall of an empire in front of our very eyes (and not just Trumps)?

We would argue not –for a number of reasons, and the last reason is the MOST important.

Firstly, it’s time for business owners to get real – Facebook is not all about you.

Your followers don’t actually go on their newsfeeds to find out what new product or service you are offering.

Yes, people buy off Facebook – in the millions. But they do not go onto Facebook to buy, and it’s this very mindset that business owners have that shows they don’t understand what Facebook’s about. Once business owners get over this idea, they often blossom into beautiful content marketers who receive better results than before – so it’s pretty important you understand this now.

Facebooks number one concern is the audience – not the businesses.

If you understand this, it means you’re creating great content audiences love – awesome! It also means you shouldn’t begrudge Facebook for trying to improve the user-experience.

There are hundreds of millions of businesses on Facebook. We seriously don’t even want to comprehend how many businesses are on Facebook. There are so many of them, and there is limited real estate on the newsfeed. How is Facebook going to ever fit them all in?

Your organic reach hasn’t been dropping because Facebook hates you. Yes, it is probably part marketing ploy to get you to pay for advertising – but it’s also realistic. Yours is not the only page your audience is following, and the longer that audience stays on Facebook, the more pages they’re going to follow, and more of that real estate is going to get taken up.

Facebook shouldn’t just be a way for you to get free marketing.

So your organic reach has been dropping – we get it and it sucks. But Facebook is still one of the cheapest places to market your business by far, so it should still be a major factor in your marketing spend even if there was this supposed “death to small businesses”.

But guess what?

FACEBOOK IS NOT MOVING YOUR POSTS TO A NEW FEED – IT’S SERIOUSLY NOT!

Multiplesourceshaveconfirmed that this Explore Feed will function very similarly to the Instagram Discover page. It will be a way for users to find new sources they aren’t already connected to.

Wait – this sounds an awful lot like a benefit for small businesses? A new way to find your business? This is fantastic. For years the Instagram Discover page has been a great source of traffic – so we’re pretty chuffed about this actually.

So no, Facebook is not moving your content off the newsfeed – it IS adding it to a new feed, but only in addition to the normal one. You may continue to see your organic reach drop as nature takes its course – or you may see this Explore feed make a massive improvement to it.

At the end of the day, it’s not about Zuckerberg trying to kill your business, it’s about how hard you work for him to show it off.